Numerous courses and books on scientific writing in English reference a classic, "The Science of Science Writing," by George D. Gopen and Judith A. Swan, first published in American Scientist (Nov-Dec 1990), Volume 78, 550-558.
In fewer than ten pages, the authors deliver a bouquet of rhetorical principles and techniques that can ensure clarity while avoiding oversimplification. They provide concise examples of the effective use of topic position and stress, placement of old (linkage) information and new information, and how to help readers focus their efforts on understanding content rather than unraveling sentences.
Tossing out a ball of data and analysis is not the same thing as communication, which requires that readers grasp the author’s key points. To be successful, a scientist must follow the same advice given to a salesperson, a labor negotiator or a lecturer: Know your audience. To a writer, this includes understanding the way a reader interprets material.
Relying on research in the fields of linguistics, rhetoric and cognitive psychology, Gopen and Swan state "three rhetorical principles based on reader expectations: First, grammatical subjects should be followed as soon as possible by their verbs; second, every unit of discourse, no matter the size, should serve a single function or make a single point; and, third, information intended to be emphasized should appear at points of syntactic closure."
While no fixed algorithms apply to good scientific writing, the authors believe it is most important to: “Put in the topic position the old information that links backward; put in the stress position the new information you want the reader to emphasize."
By following the natural structure of how readers learn, an informed writer will also identify gaps in the science underpinning the work. As the writer gains more control over how the reader interprets the information, “the structure of the prose becomes the structure of the scientific argument. Improving either one will improve the other.”
http://www.amstat.org/publications/jcgs/sci.pdf
1 comment:
Profesor Gopen's work is indeed excellent in that it examines writing from the point of view of the only person really qualified to assess the quality of the writing: THE READER. A team from Joensuu university in Finland has developed a new tool to semi-automatically assess the quality of a scientific paper: SWAN (Scientific Writing AssistaNt). SWAN has not yet reached the nirvana of perfection - but it is one of the rare free software tools to help the writer evaluate a scientific paper prior to publication. I recommend the use of the full evaluation mode instead of the quick start. Through the full evaluation, the structure of the paper is assessed (headings and subheadings) and comments are given to improve it so that it really strongly supports the contribution of the author. Another great function of SWAN is the manual fluidity evaluation. It is based on the work of Duke Professor George Gopen and allows the writer to see whether his sentences meet reader expectations.
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